1. Technical Field
This invention relates to fly fishing rods and particularly to an adjustable fly fishing rod system having transversely loadable line guides to quickly form different length rods for different uses.
2. Background Information
Throughout this application, various publications, patents and published patent applications are referred to by an identifying citation. The disclosures of the publications, patents and published patent applications referenced in this application are hereby incorporated by reference into the present disclosure for all purposes.
It is a usual practice to carry several different types of rods, e.g., of different lengths, if an angler expects to fish under different conditions. In this regard, a common problem faced by people involved in the sport of fly fishing is that not a single type of fly fishing rod is appropriate for fishing every fish species, or every fishing venue, therefore more than one type of fishing rod is generally needed to be carried when it is desired to fish different species and/or different sized bodies of water such as streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. Different types of handles, e.g., by weight, may also be preferred by different anglers depending upon the fishing venue, conditions and rod length. In addition, some rods can be rather cumbersome and difficult to carry and store in space restrictive circumstances such as camping, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, trekking, bushwacking, snowshoeing, etc. Packing and transporting this different equipment may thus become burdensome and inconvenient, as well as expensive. Furthermore, being without the proper rod for the venue, fish species or conditions can be frustrating and make catching fish nearly impossible.
These problems are exacerbated for active people who may wish to combine fishing with more active pursuits such as mountain biking, trail running, mountain climbing, etc. For example, if someone wants to bike to a pond, hike to a stream, or run a mile up river to a “secret spot”, it is difficult, if not impossible to do so with most conventional fishing rods.
There have been attempts to resolve some of these problems. One approach, for example, is to provide a collapsible or telescoping fishing rod in which sections collapse into one another to vary the length of the rod. The rod is intended to be compact enough for convenient transport in its collapsed state, and then extended to an optimal length for the particular fishing venue. A drawback of this approach, however, is that telescoping fishing rods tend to be mechanically complex and prone to breakage. They also tend to be disproportionately heavy when used at relatively short lengths, since although shorter, the collapsed rod weighs the same as when it is extended to its full length. Moreover, although such rods may be extended to various lengths, the telescoped sections provide the rod with inconsistent flexural characteristics which vary depending on the degree of overlap of the various telescoping sections, making them difficult to cast reliably and consistently, particularly when fly fishing.
Rods may also be provided with removable sections that may be selectively removed to vary the length of the rod. A drawback of this approach is that the fishing line needs to be removed from the rod's line guides prior to adding or removing sections. This generally requires one to first cut off the artificial fly, to permit the line to be pulled out of the guides. Then after sections are added or removed, the line needs to be re-threaded axially through each of the line guides, and the fly then re-tied to the line. This is a cumbersome and potentially frustrating procedure that does not lend itself to being performed quickly and easily in the field, and risks losing the fly and tangling the fishing line, spooking/frightening the fish and wasting time. Furthermore, time spent removing a fly, removing fishing line, decreasing or increasing the length of the fishing rod and then retying the fly significantly diminishes the greatest commodity for any angler—time spent fishing. Lastly, a cumbersome process as described in the preceding sentence does not lend itself to easy use by the active angler who likes to seek distant, unknown and/or otherwise hard to reach fishing locations as described above.
Therefore, a need remains for a reliable, economic, portable, modular fishing system, which would enable an angler to easily transport a fishing rod to any number of fishing venues, and then quickly modify the fishing rod on site to suit the particular fishing need without sacrificing rod action and fly presentation.